BRAD Pitt’s new war movie took realism to the limit during filming, with actors told to beat each other up, reveals Henry Fitzherbert

Could Fury be one of the most intense Second World War movies ever made? Starring Brad Pitt as a Sherman tank commander in the dying days of the war and shot last year in Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire, it is said to be a harrowing portrait of men pushed to the brink.

“Fury is not your grandfather’s war movie,” cautions producer Bill Block. Set over a 24-hour period in April 1945 and told through the eyes of newrecruit Norman Ellison (logan lerman), the film depicts a ferocious battle for survival as the five-man tank crew take on 300 German troops when a mission goes awry behind enemy lines.

If our stuff wasn’t together we had to pay for it with physical forfeits. We’re up at five in the morning, we’re doing night watches on the hour.

Brad Pitt

At the heart of the story lies the relationship between Pitt's battle-hardened tank commander, Don“Wardaddy” Collier, and the fresh-faced Norman, a typist, who is thrust into the battle to replace a dead crew member.

“It’s a different world from your usual war movie where we celebrate victorious campaigns like d-day or the Battle of The Bulge,” says writer-director David Ayer who wrote the award-winning Training day.

“One of the forgotten time periods is this last gasp of the Nazi empire with an American army that has been fighting for years and is on its last reserves of manpower. Everybody knows the war is over. They’re fighting to the last man, woman and child. It’s really pointless and nobody wants to be killed in the last couple of weeks of a war. That’s what I’m trying to capture, that sense of tragedy and consequence which I feel so often is missing from these movies.”

Who consulted several veterans, insists such behaviour is no distortion: “There was a very, very difficult side to the fighting. And the choices people would make were very difficult. That’s what the movie’s about.

“It’s about these hard choices. It wasn’t black and white. The war was black and white, it was good versus evil, but the daily fighting and the daily life was cold, wet, miserable, tired, scared, angry.”

Fury is the closing night film of the BFI London Film Festival on October 19 [CTMG]

Pitt and the cast met veterans of the 2nd Armoured division who had survived the D-day landings and the Battle of The Bulge. “They had visceral descriptions of what it was like to be in the tank,” recalls the World War Z star.

“The heat, the exhaust, it was oily, the smell of death was always in the air. Most of them were undertrained, they were under-equipped, they were dealing with incredible hardships and weather, lack of food, lack of sleep.

And they had to push on under the most harrowing conditions.” If the soldiers were pushed to the brink the same holds true for the cast as they endured a brutal four-month preparation involving fist fights, boot camp run by Navy Seals and time spent living in a tank: eating, sleeping and defecating.“I remember Brad said, ‘This is going to start smelling very bad in here very fast’,” recalls Jon Bernthal who plays the tank’s loader.

The first two months of preparation involved the cast beating each other up, getting “black eyes and bloody noses” says Bernthal. “We’re a group of actors that range from age 50 to 20, you know? Some of us have been fighting our whole lives, some of us have never been in a fight in our lives. And we’re brought together, put in a ring and told to fight each other.” Pitt included.

“On the first day I had to spar with him and it was like, it’s Brad, so what do you do?” remembers Bernthal, 37. Adopting rather ungentlemanly tactics Pitt kicked the actor between the legs... several times.

“And so I had to tell him not to after the third time. Then I gave him one in the stomach and he said it was the hardest he’d ever been hit.”

This was mere softening up for a week-long boot camp designed to break them down physically but build them up as an interdependent crew.

Pitt recalls: “It was set up to break us down, to keep us cold, to keep us exhausted, to make us miserable, to keep us wet, make us eat cold food. And if our stuff wasn’t together we had to pay for it with physical forfeits. We’re up at five in the morning, we’re doing night watches on the hour."

Bernthal adds: “They were successful in getting every one of us to break down. To reach the limit physically and emotionally where we wanted to quit.

When you have a group of people who have cracked psychologically it’s amazing where you can go. They got us to do things that we can’t talk about. And I’m not sure I’m proud of some of those things.”

One of the most committed cast members was Shia LaBoeuf, the former star of the Transformers movie, who was arrested in June for disorderly conduct during a theatre performance on Broadway. he subsequently pleaded guilty and agreed to receive treatment for alcohol abuse.

LaBoeuf, who decided to lose a tooth for the part (a dentist pulled it out), did not wash for the duration of the shoot.

Director Ayer exploited the actors’ enforced intimacy to set them against each other, spewing insults and abuse, and the effects have seemingly lingered.

“David had this sick idea that the more we learned about each other the more we could hurt each other,” says Bernthal.

“There would be times when the camera would be on and he would say (of another cast member) ‘Go after him’. not just say ‘I hate you’ but really go for the jugular.”no wonder several of the cast members are still struggling to recover.

“As a person it left some scars,” says Lerman. “It left some scars and some wounds maybe I’m still healing from.”

Bernthal adds: “I don’t look back on it as being fun. It was not a fun movie. It took an emotional toll on all of us.”For Ayer, however, the results more than justify the means. “I am ruthless as a director,” he admits. “I will do whatever I think is necessary to get what I want.”

Fury is the closing night film of the BFI London Film Festival on October 19